As New Yorkers head to the polls tomorrow for the 2016 presidential primaries — and many more states follow suit in the coming weeks and months
— it’s important to keep in mind each candidate’s record on culture.
Some are surprising, like the Republican who passed the biggest boost to
his state’s cultural funding agency ever. Others are expected, like the
Democratic former First Lady who advocated for the arts.
The choice in November’s general election will no doubt be much
clearer when it comes to support for arts, but the current field of two
Democrats and three Republicans offers a rainbow of cultural policies.
Here’s a rundown of some of the key points from each
candidate’s political career.

DEMOCRATS

Hillary Clinton

Over her two decades in politics, Hillary Clinton has worn many hats,
and in all of them, she’s championed culture. Her stint as First Lady
is particularly notable: she and Bill fought for funding for the arts
during the Culture Wars. Today her support feels a little less
tangible — perhaps a sign of the arts’ backseat status in presidential
races — but she is the only candidate who’s released a Spotify playlist.

Her first
date with Bill was a trip to the Yale Art Gallery to see a Mark Rothko
exhibit — which would be great if it hadn’t involved crossing a picket line. She also spent a chunk of the visit sitting on a Henry Moore sculpture.

In 1994, Bill Clinton signed into law “Goals 2000: The Educate America Act,” which set the first national standards for arts education. As then First Lady, Hillary was a strong advocate for the legislation and the importance of arts education overall.

That same year, First Lady Clinton inaugurated the rotating White House Sculpture Garden and assembled the permanent White House Crafts Collection.

In 1995, First Lady Clinton wrote an op-ed in the New York Times defending public funding for culture, specifically the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA):

This is an ominous time
for those of us who care deeply about the arts in America. A misguided,
misinformed effort to eliminate public support for the arts not only
threatens irrevocable damage to our cultural institutions but also to
our sense of ourselves and what we stand for as a people.One of the great successes of the
arts in America is that they are not the preserve of any “cultural
elite.” Through museums, libraries, schools, dance companies and
concerts, the arts are truly part of the public domain, accessible to
all and capable of encouraging every person’s artistic expression and
sensibility.

In 1997, she criticized Republican attempts to reduce the NEA budget from $99.5 million to $10 million, calling the figure “totally inadequate if not embarrassing.”

That same
year, First Lady Clinton served as honorary chairwoman of a President’s
Committee on the Arts and Humanities, which issued a 35-page report recommending “a ‘millennium initiative’ to revitalize public and private support for culture,” including
“an appropriation by 2000 of $2 per citizen to support the national
endowments for the arts and humanities, and for libraries and museums.”
In her speech at the presentation of the report, she predicted Google
Art Project, saying:

And as we prepare for a
new century — and a new millennium — the arts and humanities are more
essential than ever to the endurance of our democratic values of
tolerance, pluralism and freedom. … And we can support efforts to ensure
that America’s cultural resources are made more widely available on the
Internet — so that a child growing up in some of our most isolated
communities can take a virtual tour of our finest museums and libraries.

Also that same year, First Lady Clinton won a Grammy: Best Spoken Word Or Non-Musical Album for the audio version of her children’s book It Takes a Village.

In 1998, First Lady Clinton helped inaugurate Save America’s Treasures,
a federal program to preserve historically significant buildings,
artworks, documents, and more. From 1999 to 2010, the program awarded over $315 millionto nearly 1,300 projects.

In 1999, Clinton won the Americans for the Arts’ National Arts Award for Arts Advocacy for her work for her work as First Lady.

Between 2001 and 2007, then Senator Clinton co-sponsored
a number of bills establishing a National Museum of African American
History and Culture, a National Women’s History Museum, and a National
Museum of the American Latino Community.

In 2006, Senator Clinton was a member of the newly formed Senate Cultural Caucus.

In 2013,
then Secretary of State Clinton — along with the heads of a dozen
government agencies and organizations — signed the “Declaration of
Learning,” an initiative to promote the use of historic artifacts as the
bases for digital educational tools.

That same year, Secretary of State Clinton wrote a short piece for Vanity Fair about the Art in Embassies program:

In fact, art is also a
tool of diplomacy. It reaches beyond governments, past the conference
rooms and presidential palaces, to help us connect with more people in
more places. It is a universal language in our search for common ground,
an expression of our shared humanity.

On the campaign trail, Clinton has said little about the arts, but she has reiterated her support for arts education.

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders speaking at an event in Hooksett, New Hampshire, on January 21, 2016 (photo by Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons)

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders may
not have as extensive a national policy history with the arts as
Clinton, but in the 2016 presidential race, he’s been far more vocal
about his support for them, even promising to be an “arts President” if
elected. He’s been rewarded for that attention, too; among all the
current candidates, Sanders undoubtedly has the biggest following among
creators and creatives.

In the late 1960s and ‘70s, while living in Vermont, a young Bernard Sanders wrote, produced, and sold “‘radical film strips’ and other education materials to schools about people like Eugene Debs.”

He also wrote for the alternative newspaper the Vermont Freeman, penning essays about cancer and gender roles (the latter begins, “A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy”).

In 1981, Sanders became the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and shortly thereafter established
the city’s first Arts Council. “At that time, way back when, it was
almost unheard of to have a municipally funded and supported effort to
promote the arts,” he says.

In the mid 1980s, after his reelection as mayor, Sanders revitalized the Burlington waterfront, working to make it “people-oriented” and largely publicly owned, with space for parkland, beaches, a science center, and more.

In 1987, Sanders released an album, titled We Shall Overcome, that features him speaking the lyrics of protest songs, accompanied by a choir. (He did not win a Grammy for it.)

Between 1993 and 2014, while serving in the US House of Representatives and the Senate, Sanders co-sponsored
bills establishing the National Museum of African American History and
Culture and studying the creation of a National Museum of Latino
Heritage and a National Women’s History Museum, as well as resolution to
honor the Hudson River School painters, among others.

Between
2004 and 2014, Americans for the Arts’ Action Fund gave Sanders an A+
for his arts-related voting record in the House and Senate.

In 2014 and 2015, Sanders organized concerts with choruses from several Vermont high schools to stress the importance of public funding for arts education.

According to Americans for the Arts, “Sanders
is known to enjoy ‘populist art.’ He embodies the ‘can-do’ and
self-reliant spirit of Vermont, and sees the arts as another citizen
driven initiative fueled by this spirit. Sanders strongly believes in
the arts’ ability to break down cultural barriers, and that art can be
used for cultural diplomacy.”

In 2015, more than 100 “artists, musicians, and cultural leaders of America” endorsed Sanders’s candidacy. Margaret Cho, Ron English, and Bonnie Raitt are among the signers.

In 2015, Sanders released a video promising to be an “arts President” if elected. In it, he says:

You have my promise that
as President, I will be an arts President. I will continue to advocate
strongly for robust funding of the arts in our cities, schools and
public spaces. Art is speech. Art is what life is about.

In 2016, Sanders launched a nationally touring art exhibition, titled The Art of a Political Revolution, which was on view in New York this past weekend.

REPUBLICANS

Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz speaking at New England College on February 3, 2016 (photo by Michael Vadon, via Wikimedia Commons)

Beyond his professed conversion to country music fandom on 9/11, choice of an art historian to be his national security adviser, and dubious taste in street art, Texas Senator Ted Cruz‘s
cultural record is sparse. However, in a debate during his campaign for
the Senate, he did call for the elimination of the National Endowment
for the Arts (NEA) and several other essential federal agencies and
departments.

In a 2011 debate at the Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, Cruz said:

We need to get the federal government out of areas it
doesn’t have the constitutional authority to do. We need to eliminate
the department of education, we need to eliminate the department of
commerce, we need to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. We
need to eliminate the IRS and move to a flat tax or a fair tax.

In February, Cruz’s campaign pulled merchandise designed by the street artist Sabo
from its online store after being questioned about Cruz’s position on
the artist’s many racist comments and calls for the assassination of
President Barack Obama on social media.

John Kasich

John Kasich is far
and away the strongest Republican candidate for culture, though the
Ohio governor’s record on the arts isn’t without blemish. He oversaw a
historic increase in funding for the Ohio Arts Council, has been an
outspoken advocate for adding the arts to STEM education curricula,
created a statewide committee to distribute funding to arts and culture
projects, and signed into law a bill establishing the post of Ohio Poet
Laureate. However, as a congressman he twice voted to reduce funding to
the NEA.

In 1983 and then again in 1987, Kasich was a co-sponsor of bills to have the square dance designated as the US’ national folk dance.

In 1996, then Congressman Kasich voted in favor of the 1996 Interior Appropriations Bill, which cut NEA funding by $62 million.

In 1998, Congressman Kasich voted against a proposed amendment to HR 4193, which would have restored $93 million in NEA funding.

During a speech at the 2012 Governor’s Awards for the Arts ceremony, Kasich said:

We did have a very tough budget time, and we’re not out
of the woods yet. But we all felt that the arts are critical. I know
that there were a lot of people surprised that Republicans in the House
and the Senate and the Governor’s Office could actually provide a very
strong level of funding for the arts … the most since 1986.

We will also recommend expanding what’s been known as
STEM education to all grade levels. Of course, we all know the letters
in STEM stand for science, technology, engineering, and math. But
personally I like to call it STEAM. STEAM education — to add a capital A
for the arts. Any student who’s going to succeed later in life,
including someone choosing a technical career, is going to need creative
skills and know how to apply critical thinking. Those skills are best
developed by exposure to the arts. Science, technology, engineering,
math, and the arts. Arts community, did you ever think you’d see a
conservative Republican ever say this? But we believe it. Because these
are all essential for success in these 21st Century careers.

Donald Trump

Because he has never held public office, getting a sense of Donald Trump’s
cultural policy is largely a matter of extrapolation from past
incidents and comments, none of which is particularly encouraging. He
is, however, the only candidate to date who has answered the Washington Post’s arts questionnaire, which helps some. And, for whatever it’s worth, his candidacy has proved far moreinspirational to the nation’sartists than any other in recent memory.

In 1980, while demolishing the Bonwit Teller Building on Fifth Avenue to make way for Trump Tower, Trump promised
two 15-foot-tall panels featuring ornate Art Deco designs and figures
from the older building’s façade to the Metropolitan Museum — on the
condition that the cost of removing them wasn’t prohibitive. After
determining that their removal would have cost $32,000 and delayed the
project by a week and a half, Trump ordered his crew to destroy the
panels with jackhammers.

In November 1999, at the height of the controversy surrounding the Young British Artists exhibition Sensation at the Brooklyn Museum, Trump — who at the time was weighing a possible run for president —
waded into the public hysteria over Chris Ofili’s painting “The Holy
Virgin Mary” (1996). “As President, I would ensure that the National
Endowment of the Arts stops funding of this sort,” Trump told the Daily News,
apparently not realizing that the exhibition had not received any NEA
funding. “It’s not art. It’s absolutely gross, degenerate stuff. It
shouldn’t be funded by government.”

In December 1999, during a visit to the Museum of Modern Art with New York Times journalist Herbert Muschamp, Trump mistook a Donald Judd sculpture for a table and threw his jacket and some binders onto it.

In 2013, Trump was awarded
the lease to the Old Post Office Building in Washington, DC, to
redevelop it into a Trump International Hotel. As a result,
several government agencies that had long called the building home —
including the NEA, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and
the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities — were forced to
relocate.

The Congress, as representatives of the people, make the
determination as to what the spending priorities ought to be. I had the
great fortune to receive a comprehensive liberal arts education from an
Ivy League institution. What is most important is that we examine how
one-size-fits-all approaches imposed by the federal government have
corrupted the availability and efficacy of liberal arts education.
Critical thinking skills, the ability to read, write and do basic math
are still the keys to economic success. A holistic education that
includes literature and the arts is just as critical to creating good
citizens.

In a subsequent question about hypothetically hosting arts and culture events at the White House as president, Trump told the Post:

First, there is no Constitutional obligation for the
President to do what your question implies. That said, supporting and
advocating for appreciation of the arts is important to an informed and
aware society. As President, I would take on that role.